Chiefly family correspondence and some business letters. Most of the family letters are those of Elizabeth Henderson Alexander and her brothers, Leonard Henderson (North Carolina Supreme Court chief justice, 1829-1833) and Archibald Henderson (member of Congress, 1799-1803). Business correspondence mainly consists of letters between J. H. Bissell and Kemp P. Willis.

Correspondence primarily about John Franklin Hoke and his activities, although there are also numerous items relating to the Alexander family, especially Elvira Catherine Wilson Alexander, Joseph Wilson Alexander, William Lee Alexander, Laura Alexander, and Mary Josephine (Coosa) Wilson. In addition to family matters, topics include politics, the Mexican-American War, the removal of Cherokees from North Carolina, and the Civil War. Correspondents who were not family members include Milledge Luke Bonham, Charles Fisher, Maxcy Gregg, Joseph Lane, Levi Silliman Ives, and Eleanor Swain, wife of North Carolina Governor David L. Swain.

Many letters relate to political matters of the period including banking issues, November 1840; President John Tyler's use of the veto, 22 September 1841; local party politics, December 1841, 10 February 1842, 25 October 1852, 8 April and 6 July 1855; the southern convention movement, 21 August and 25 September 1850, 7 March 1851; the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 8 July 1854; and the raid on Harper's Ferry, 18 November 1859. Catherine Wilson Alexander Hoke mentioned the visit of Hungarian nationalist Louis Kossuth to the United States and noted that her sister "talks of little else" (18 November 1852).

In 1847, several items deal with John Franklin Hoke's military service during the Mexican-American War, including lists of recruits in Lincolnton, N.C., and St. Louis, Mo., as well as letters denying charges of cowardice against him. After the war, J. F. Hoke corresponded with United States Treasury Department auditors about army provisions for which he had been responsible as a military officer (e.g., 27 January and 23 February 1850, 17 January and 17 March 1851). At the same time, Hoke also sought an army commission for which he was endorsed by M. L. Bonham, who had been Hoke's superior officer in Mexico and later represented South Carolina in Congress (25 February 1851).

Materials relating to Levi Silliman Ives, North Carolina's antebellum Episcopal bishop whose conversion to Roman Catholicism stirred great controversy in the state, include letters dated 3 June 1850, 23 February 1852, 9 May 1854, and several undated items from the 1850s.

Several letters in 1857 relate to the removal of Cherokees from North Carolina, specifically with J. F. Hoke's efforts to obtain a federal contract to handle the removal. See 28 April, 4 May, 6 May, 19 May, 3 September, and 25 November 1857.

The Civil War figures prominently in this subseries. J. F. Hoke's service as North Carolina adjutant general is documented in 1861 items that include communications with North Carolina Governor John Ellis (especially in June) and receipts for weapons. He later served as colonel in the 13th and 23rd North Carolina regiments. Most of the Civil War material, however, concerns the Alexander family. Joseph Wilson Alexander, a United States Navy officer circa 1857-1861, and his brother, William Lee Alexander, both served in the Confederate military.

J. W. Alexander, who predicted trouble when he heard of Lincoln's 1860 election while in port at Gibraltar (see 30 November 1860), resigned his commission and joined the Confederate Navy. His letters recount his experiences as a prisoner of war in New England (e.g., 13 September 1863, December 1863, 7 August 1864, and file of undated 1861-1865) and his return to active duty following a prisoner exchange (e.g., 9 November 1864). Occasional letters throughout the war touch on William Lee Alexander's activities with the Confederate Army in Texas, where he had moved before the war to serve as president of the University of Nacogdoches (about which see 25 October and 20 December 1859, and 9 February 1860). Elvira Catherine Wilson Alexander, mother of these two military officers, observed during the war, "I believe this war will last just five years longer, so we may rest alone on our Heavenly Father--no other help may be expected, and no other will avail and we are to be taught until we have learned our lesson of [illegible] and trust as we ought" (undated 1861-1865). As the war came to a close, C. W. Read tried to obtain a wagon from J. W. Alexander so that he and a group of Confederates could evade Sherman and make it to the Trans-Mississippi West (20 February 1865). Also included here is a notebook (V-345/2) belonging to H. T. Guion with records of the North Carolina State Troops, Company B, 1st Regiment Artillery.

Correspondence and other materials primarily related to William Alexander Hoke, his family, and career as a lawyer and jurist, and also to the legal practice of John Franklin Hoke until his death in 1888. Many of the items are family letters to and from William Alexander Hoke, his wife, Mary McBee (Mamie) Hoke (d. 1920), and his two sisters, Sallie Badger Hoke (d. 1914) and Nancy Childs (Nannie) Hoke (d. 1893). Materials relating to Sallie Badger Hoke's trip to Europe and Egypt, 1888-1889, are also included. Much family correspondence comes from the period when Sallie Badger Hoke worked for a New Jersey judge, circa 1899-1913. Nancy Childs Hoke carried on a correspondence with Frances Christine Fisher Tiernan, the novelist who wrote as Christian Reid (e.g., January-April 1880) and Florence and Zebulon Vance (e.g., 20 October 1889, 7 and 17 June 1891, and 8 November 1892).

Correspondents not in William Alexander Hoke's immediate family include Charles Aycock, Victor C. Barringer, Locke Craig, Josephus Daniels, George Davis (Confederate attorney general), Robert F. Hoke, and Hoke Smith. Topics include William Alexander Hoke's law practice, his campaign for judge in 1890, his possible candidacy for the state Supreme Court and the United States Senate in 1902, his elevation to the state's high court in 1904, and his subsequent re-elections.

Other topics include Reconstruction, notably letters regarding abuse of individuals by "disloyal organizations" in Lincoln County, N.C. (23 January 1871; also see 17 October and 20 December 1870), and various mentions of the Ku Klux Klan by name (e.g., 6 April 1872 and 18 June 1874). During this period, A. G. Smith wrote to William Alexander Hoke from Alabama that "all our boys, nearly" had gone to Texas or Mexico to avoid "the d--n U.S. marshals" (14 April 1872).

Laura Alexander's brief theatrical career in New York, which was cut short by her sudden death in 1874, is the subject of several letters in the early 1870s.

Undated letters, arranged by correspondent. Most of the files are organized by recipient, though some are by the sender and are so designated.

Arrangement: chronological

Bills, receipts, and other financial materials of William Alexander Hoke and other members of his family. Included are slave bills of sale (especially 1820s-1850s), an agreement on hiring slaves for the first quarter of 1865, tax receipts for a few scattered years (1863, 1894, 1902), bank deposit slips (1899, 1900, 1904), and bills and receipts from various stores.

Arrangement: chronological

Notes, briefs, wills, subpoenas and other legal papers, most of which pertain to the legal career of John Franklin Hoke or, beginning in the 1870s, to that of William Alexander Hoke. Documents include J. F. Hoke's bar admission signed by North Carolina Supreme Court members (16 June 1842), an affidavit of Mary Murphy Dickson in connection with a Revolutionary War pension (27 April 1846), and a copy of the will of Florence (Mrs. Zebulon) Vance (24 May 1891).

Arrangement: chronological

Deeds, indentures, surveys, rent agreements, and other materials relating to landholdings and land transactions in North Carolina, mostly in Lincoln and surrounding counties. Included are an 1821 town plot of Lincolnton and an 1829 list of taxable property for John Hoke (presumably the father of John Franklin Hoke).

Deeds, indentures, surveys, rent agreements, and other materials relating to landholdings and land transactions in North Carolina, mostly in Lincoln and surrounding counties. Included are an 1821 town plot of Lincolnton and an 1829 list of taxable property for John Hoke (presumably the father of John Franklin Hoke).

Clippings, primarily from North Carolina newspapers, covering legal cases, politics, obituaries, weddings, history, poetry, a speech of United States Secretary of the Interior Hoke Smith (1894), and the electric rail system in Charlotte, N.C. (1910). Also included is one sheet from the Charlotte Daily Bulletin (20 March 1863).